Guild Wars 2

Exarthious.5792:

DPS tests against an opponent that never moves are pointless.

Considering PvE mobs don’t move much and don’t dodge, you’re only comparing DPS for pvp with that silly complaint. And there’s more to pvp than DPS, otherwise warriors would be king there as well.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

A warrior bleed trait is 33% on crit a rangers is 66% on crit. Ranger can get bleed for a pets regular attack as well as bleed on feline and other animals if traited. You can’t just compare the weapons on stuff like this you also have to consider what the rangers pet is doing.

Ranger pet conditions are completely unbuffed and unaffected by gear.

You don’t even need tank guardians. Bring berserker or pvt+zerker accessories+ruby orbs guardians and it’ll work just as well.

Guardians are brought to fractals not to tank damage, but for the stupidly OP spirit shield+wall of reflection+hold the line. Spec for larger, longer lasting symbols with a hammer and you can spam your melee with perma prot, and switch to greatsword for when you need to pull in groups like lava elementals and burst them down.

Fractals have very hard hitting ranged mobs, and spirit shield is the strongest projectile deflection tool in PvE. Guardians will reduce the damage to the group, still bring good damage, and make for great rezzers by dropping a wall on top of someone so they can rez them without getting hit by agony.

It’s really the projectiles from trash that kill you in fractals, especially those dredge resonant shockwaves. By 40+ most people are expected to know how to dodge agony.

Guardians and warriors are just absolutely ridiculous in how they bring the best group utility and damage while having durability. You might bring an ele for more flexible burst aoe and some healing/condi removal. But guardian and warrior are just really favored in pve because they’re straightforward mechanics that work reliably and most of their skills are universal as opposed to niche skills.

Mesmers and eles come after guardians and warriors in desirability, but they suffer the case of “more than 1 is too much” whereas stacking warriors and guardians is never considered a bad choice.

An HGH engineer can also work rather well because he’s got aoe chill and blinds from grenades while doing pretty kitten great sustained aoe while granting boons to the group.

Rangers and necros are the classes I would call pretty much useless to any group.

Jon.1039:

I don’t think adding tokens to story mode dungeons is really conducive to the point of story mode. You play story mode for the story, you play explorer mode to explore. or grind…Honestly, people who run story mode with their friends helping them through it should get alternate currency than EM currency. People will then optimize which is more efficient to farm and you’ll have an imbalance of groups. If you’re helping someone out in story mode, do it like they do in Fractals, reward Karma. There’s plenty of things that still require karma, and nice people should receive nice things in return

There’s no use for karma other than to blow it on orrian boxes, legenadries, or cultural weapons. With dailies and monthlies karma is raining like candy.

I guess there will always be some idiot suggesting zerker gear cannot be run outside cof1.

My 12k hp full berserker d/d ele does 50+ fractals just fine. So do our thieves.

Maybe your thieves are just bad. As you are for suggesting they run a less efficient setup.

At high lv fractals even 2k toughness won’t suffice anyways, since everything hits like a truck regardless and the way to live is to dodge, cc, and use reflection.

In this game you’re not really meant to tank hits.

…..huh? Warriors have low dps? That’s news considering mainhand axe warrior has by far the highest sustained damage in game and can still bring utility to a group and doesn’t lose burst capacity.

I don’t know why people keep obsessing over GS warriors when even if they nerfed 100b, mainhand axe warriors would still reign supreme in PvE.

The problem with warriors is that their autoattack damage is outrageously higher than other classes, and mainhand axe attacks pretty fast to top it off.

HotHit.6783:

Zenith.7301:

Your SB doesn’t bounce or aoe. Single target is useless in wvw or dungeons where in wvw you’re fighting zergs of 30+ people and in dungeons aoe is king.

I know marksmanship is a bit of a questionable tree (especially in PvE where combat will often last too long to justify the opening strikes without the remorseless trait), however, it is intended to be the tree used by archer type rangers and with 20 points in marksmanship both ranger bows can become ranged AoE weapons. You also get increased condition duration which might be a bit wasteful, but it does make the longbow’s vulnerability much stronger and with 24 points and the right sigil (less points are needed if you use runes) crossfire’s bleed or sun spirit’s burn gets another tick.

You might wanna skip marksmanship and go skirmishing for damage. If you do, there’s the honed axes trait right there, which provides more power to an already AoE longrange weapon. Yes the axe might have only 900 range, but so does the Theif’s shortbow.

Piercing Arrows is nothing close to AoE. It hits through a line, which is far less efficient than hitting around a perimeter like Fireball.

A berserker ranger will not come close to the damage a staff elementalist is dealing to a group.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

You should use SB instead of LB, if you want max dmg from range. My glass cannon berserker build hits up to 1,3k dmg per arrow with no might with SB. And I rarely see a non-crit hit. And with 20 in BM my cat can hit 5k with Sick ’Em + basic attacks crits bleed.

Your SB doesn’t bounce or aoe. Single target is useless in wvw or dungeons where in wvw you’re fighting zergs of 30+ people and in dungeons aoe is king.

SB has a slight single target advantage over thief sb, but thief sb is far superior aoe, defensively, and utilitywise. A SB thief can dodge about 3-4 times and chain a cripple with his #3 skill, or aoe bleed or aoe poison or aoe blind and infiltrator’s arrow teleports them out of roots. Their #2 is also the best blast finisher in game, and they can combo aoe weakness wiht their shortbow.

Deceptive evasion is the only way to get 3 clone shatters consistently, so they’d have to reduce cd’s on clone skills to compensate, or increase the damage of shatters to compensate for the loss of sustained.

I just think the real problem is phantasm damage makes too much of a portion of the mesmer’s damage alongside shatters. So you have shatter, blurred frenzy, and phantasm that all can do over 4k damage each on fairly low cd’s while classes other than thief or warrior simply have much longer cooldowns on their hard hitting skills.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Note: As I only play tPvP at this point, understand that my comments are specific to that part of the game which I know.

@KlausKNT – Perhaps you have never played in tPvP. Necro is definitely not last. See Warrior. After that, see Thief. Then Necro can enter the discussion, but most would probably put it somewhere 3-5.

@OP – Depends on if you want a challenge or not. Necro has (in my opinion) the highest skill floor of any profession in the game. This means that in order to be remotely decent with a necro you need to have more skill than with any other profession. Ele on the other hand has a low skill floor at the moment. Playing a tPvP bunker Ele somewhat effectively requires 3 things.
1) Get a build off the web of a D/D or S/D bunker ele
2) Get into a match and periodically roll your face accross your keyboard spamming all skills on rechage and swapping attunements.
3) If you get in trouble use RtL, heal, then go right back to the point you were harassing

Now granted, they have threatened to nerf ele in the near future, but that is the current state of the profession.

This is so ridiculously wrong. You try to play a noob ele and come across any decent mesmer or necro or ranger, and you will get torn apart.

Writetyper.1985:

For pure, maximum PvE DPS would 2 GS auto hits>maul>2 GS auto hits>swoop>2 gs auto hits>maul repeat not be way better than letting the full chain hit?

Also, would that be possible?

How are you getting 2 autos in between every maul? If you’re taking the trait in WS you’re probably not maximizing DPS anyways, since that would come at the cost of taking from the power line or the crit dmg/prec line or your BM line.

And on berserker gear the returns for stacking power/prec/critdmg are exponential.

If they would just buff the wimpy greatsword autoattack, GS wouldn’t need so much propping up by gear.

Also, why is a Berserker PvE set 78% crit damage? I got 100% crit dmg on my mesmer with ruby orbs, and food adds in another 10% for 110% crit damage.

Also, have you run tests for rapid fire on berserker stats? I keep hearing Crossfire matches rapidfire, but I simply do not see it testing both weapons. Yes, for a 5 sec channel, compared to blurred frenzy or 100b or necro axe #2 rapid fire is wimpy, but on a berserker set on my ranger with around 100% crit damage I am hitting 9-10k rapidfires, and I’m just not seeing the numbers for the shortbow in 5 seconds landing 800-900 crits per crossfire matching rapid fire within a 5 sec time window.

I know longbow sustained is pretty crappy thanks to the (surprise, same as GS and axe mainhand) terrible autoattack, but it frontloads damage extremely well with an opening 20 stacks of vulnerability that prop the jaguar and my rapidfire, so it seems like you would use the longbow for hunter’s shot>rapidfire into a switch to greatsword, and use barrage occassionaly for aoe control.

Also, how does the mainhand sword stack up vs. GS post GS buff? How large is the gap still? Mainhand sword may do more sustained but it sure as hell doesn’t have an ability that crits for 5-10k in berserker gear (5k is my average crit without using signets or might stacks), so at the very least the greatsword gets to claim a small niche in burst capacity.

I’m just so bored of shortbow #1 spam….. it’s not good design and quite frankly I wish it was revamped alongside many weapons to contain more rotational aspects.

naphack.9346:

Zenith.7301:

The buff to greatsword also did little to place it as a useful weapon. It’s still inferior to mainhand sword+dagger or torch in sustained damage, and it’s still pretty easy to kite.

Hilt Bash in particular has an awful rooting animation effect that makes it very impractical to land on moving targets.

The only time I miss with hilt bash is when I’m blinded or immobilized

Try chilled or crippled while that escaping ele has swiftness.

The buff to greatsword also did little to place it as a useful weapon. It’s still inferior to mainhand sword+dagger or torch in sustained damage, and it’s still pretty easy to kite.

Hilt Bash in particular has an awful rooting animation effect that makes it very impractical to land on moving targets.

Ursan.7846:

Zenith.7301:

I just think a perception can be plentiful and echoed by enough people that it becomes consensus.

And a consensus makes it true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Just because many people believe it, doesn’t mean it’s true. Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist actions were supported by a majority of Americans, and yet it it destroyed many, many innocent lives. Most of America believed in the guilt of the Duke Lacrosse players, and yet they were ultimately proven innocent.

Look, a tank Guardian may very well do more damage than a BM Ranger. I don’t know if that is true or false. Do a test, and and you will convince me. But saying “It’s true because people believe it” is a logical fallacy, and I repeat, not conducive to good discussion and dilutes your argument. And that is my whole point.

I’m aware an argument popularity does not make it necessarily true. But you underplay the value of consensus in getting close to truth. It helps point out trends, and when enough people share a similar experience with a build, it’s harder to prove they’re just exaggerating about the inefficiency of the build.

Sol.4310:

Wonder how you guys would go in SPvP duel’s I’ve found it allot harder in SPvP then unbalanced WvW.

One of my mesmer mate which I beat in WvW, I rarely beat in SPvP same goes for the d/d ele, there are some really outstanding players in SPvP compared to WvW, its why I’ve made the change away from the unbalanced WvW

Stats in spvp are different. In spvp there’s no vit/tough/condidmg amulet, for example. There are crit caps and confusion is nerfed. In the case of rangers with apothecary gear in wvw you can get far more bunker stat stacking than you can get from an amulet. Food also makes a huge difference.

I just think a perception can be plentiful and echoed by enough people that it becomes consensus.

How many BM bunker rangers do you see in WvW teamfights, PvE dungeons, or spvp?

The whole purpose of BM bunker is 1v1 or 1v2. It has no aoe damage whatsoever (which eliminates it from dungeons and wvw teamfights straight away). It’s an attrition roaming spec.

How can you declare a build completely undesirable in most aspects of the game OP/good?

Ursan.7846:

Zenith.7301:

snip

Well, again, I’m not agreeing/disagreeing with you. What I meant by “metrics” is running standardized tests with your Guardian’s spec and whatever Noss’s BM is, instead of just tossing around numbers. Doing 3k crits consistently is great, but does that actually translate into higher DPS? (My Ranger SB build consistently crits for 1.2k with Crossfire, for example, but fires twice as fast. Raw numbers don’t tell the whole story.)

By providing test results that show your Guardian spec does more damage than his BM build, you can convincingly prove that your point “BM spec does weak damage” is true beyond a doubt.

Is all I’m saying. I’m all for good discussion, but tossing around theory and personal experience is conducive to it.

EDIT: Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding, but re-reading your post I get the impression you are trying to compare Guardian damage to Ranger pet damage by itself? I don’t think that’s what Noss is saying at all, I think he’s saying BM damage overall. Ignore me if I’m wrong though.

I meant that when I said the pet is half my hybrid guardian’s damage, not even a berserker geared one, there’s an issue insisting that if the pet had uptime while the ranger was bunker, it’d be overpowered. All we need to look at is attack rates, but my guardian’s greatsword swings are pretty much close to the attack rates of most pets, and it takes a best case scenario on pet traiting and type of pet used to have close to half or two thirds of my hybrid guardian’s output.

The claim that a pet would be able to solo a player is just not true. Bunker rangers kill very slowly by themselves. Pet uptime and lowering signet cooldowns simply would not make the pet overpowered at all, as it’s not achieving the numbers any other class can’t achieve. If pets in combination with the ranger were such overwhelming sustained damage or burst, they wouldn’t be sitting besides necros for last place of class nobody wants for dungeons, where sustained damage is really prized above all.

The lack of scaling alone for pets will always hold them back. Pet’s don’t get 110% crit damage or 1200+ condi damage, and they don’t get the vast amounts of power and condition damage from high might stacks or sigil stacks.

Ursan.7846:

Zenith.7301:

No, it is weak. What you call good pet damage I call half my guardian’s hybrid spec damage.

While I don’t agree or disagree with you, I think it’ll be a useful contribution to this discussion if you provided actual metrics and experimental results to back up your claims.

I can say Rangers do more damage than Guardians. You can say they don’t. Both our statements are pretty worthless because we’re essentially throwing out unproven claims, with the best evidence being “general/individual perception of things” which is shaky evidence, at best.

Again, I don’t agree or disagree, but for the sake of good discussion (which I hope everyone is interested in) more objective analysis is needed.

My guardian runs PVT armor with ascended berserker accessories and ruby orbs. His autoattack routinely crits for 3-3.5k. I run sigil of bloodlust on offset mace with sigil of battle on focus, and sigil of fire on greatsword.

My ranger’s jaguar autoattack crits on the other hand peak at around 2-2.2k with crit damage trait (obviously his special abilities can go for up to 5k without cooldowns, and up to 8-9k using long cooldowns like signets). He’s the only pet besides bird that crits consistently. The other pets crit much less frequently, and there’s nothing I can do to increase their rate of crit chance other than running the subpar weapon that is horn with the nature magic trait that shares my boons with the pet so the pet can get at least some fury.

My guardian can get 90% crit damage while maintaining 1600 toughness and 2178 power with about 35% crit chance. He can use sharpening stones. He simply will outscale pet output, because pet output is fixed and doesn’t increase with increasing quality of gear, the pet does not benefit from sigils despite being a third of our damage, the pet does not benefit from stats from runes that have conversion ratios or special procs. The pet will rarely run with 25 might stacks outside RaO, while the average player in a guild group will maintain these stacks. The pet’s interaction with combo fields is entirely limited by its random ai, and its uptime will always be vastly reduced so long as it can suffer through chill and cripple fields — it has little condition removals of its own — and the ranger only has 2; one from 30 points in WS (our defensive line) and a signet with random passive condition removal.

Noss.4105:

Sebrent.3625:

Signet of the Wild is on a 2 minute cooldown. Sick’em is on a 1 minute cooldown. THose are very large windows in which that spec is weak … and it can’t run away like a GC Thief who just failed their burst.

As long as your pet is doing damage, BM spec is pretty far from weak.
Thing is that you could have insane burst in demand, and still have bunker ehp.
Also rangers are pretty good at disengaging too if you got GS.

No, it is weak. What you call good pet damage I call half my guardian’s hybrid spec damage.

The pet does not scale with gear or critdmg, while other classes do.

Signet of the wild and sic em are your only real dps cd’s, and they’re significantly longer cd’s. Signets and shouts in general have horridly long cd’s relative to the cd’s of other classes.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I never said ranger was better at insert thing here than class insert class here, which people here seem to be under the impression of. I’ve never claimed that ranger was top tier, and have repeatedly been saying rangers need help here on the forum, so I don’t seem to understand where people are getting the impression that I think Ranger is fine.
I also openly admit I’m not the best PvP guy, or WvW guy… but I do tend to hold my own when I go in and play in those areas, and I don’t feel like I’m sankittenging my team by being a ranger. Maybe I just don’t operate at the levels/tiers you all do, but I certainly try in the levels/tiers I am in, and I tend to have moderate success.

I’ll try to get better in those areas and advance before I go speaking about rangers in the future.

I don’t think anyone is telling you to shut up or stop voicing your opinion. People are just confused about your claims and want to see where they are coming from.

The context where you make your claims matter. 1v1 or teamfights, whether your cooldowns are up ( the thief can burst more often than the ranger’s antiburst cooldowns are up, especially signets with hefty 80+ second recharges).

Well, you want rangers for entangle and muddy terrain. That’s the only good thing they bring to a group to counter stability spam from guardians.

But rangers are not wanted for their ranged damage (eles do this better), melee damage (every other class does this better as the pet is dead in teamfights if you go melee), support (guardians and eles and engineers and necromancers and mesmers do this better), or CC (guardians and engineers and eles do this better).

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Ranger toolbox isn’t just utilities, folks, it’s your 1-5. And between LR and QZ, there’s a TON of utility power in just those two alone, leaving a third open for whatever you feel you may need in the fight and to better define your play style. Shortbow is full of utility and also does really good sustained DPS, so I stand by my statement of rangers having an expansive tool box.
As for Ranger DPS not matching thief burst… yeah, that’s pretty obvious – I don’t think I’m rocking some boat by saying that. I accept that trade-off of lacking burst potential for having a better toolbox of things I can do to survive while outputting consistent DPS. I can see the longbow as maybe being a bit spiky, but nowhere near what a D/D can do. Maybe a trap ranger can get a bit bursty if they hit all 3 traps at once on a glass cannon, but Ranger to me isn’t a burst class – it’s a sustain and survive class.

You can’t really avoid a ranger’s sustained damage, but you can mitigate nearly all of a thief’s burst with really fast reaction and smart play.

@Misterdevious
I once got my jaguar to hit a warrior using a rifle for a super awesome crit around 12k on a single attack when all roided up from signet and shout, and getting a lucky crit. There’s potential, but it involves luck I can’t depend on, whereas a D/D thief can depend on his skill.

Also, despite my best efforts, I could not write a post that didn’t come across as defensive lol. I’m still a ranger through and through :3
I’m more upset that nobody said anything whatsoever about my “swooping” into the thread… I thought that was golden.

What’s the point of any other traitline besides Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic, then? If glass cannon rangers are not meant to exist, why not place restrictions on gear?

Because a ranger in full berserkers is NOT survivable. You can use LR, just like a thief can use his Shadow Step utility to get out of a burst attempt (which is not unique to rangers), but the fact is once you take a single backstab half your health is gone just like the thief’s.

What’s the utility of a shortbow ranger when a shortbow thief can do the same and evade 3-4 times and chain cripple, while his auto bounces among targets and the ranger is restricted to one target?

Rangers have no ranged aoe outside barrage, which is on a large 30 sec cd on a ranged weapons with poor sustained relative to shortbow and little defenses/kiting options. And to top it off using barrage often gets you low on health from a group’s retaliation alone since barrage hits so many times compared to Meteor Storm. Why does my long range shot need to be boyond 700 range to do the damage of a fireball which does that damage at any range AND aoe?

Most importantly, all I see you address is d/d thieves when there are builds like sword thieves and pistol/dagger thieves who still pack considerable damage while maintaining much greater survivability. A pistol/dagger thief, despite being a condition attrition build, with his stealth opener that he can chain thanks to your pet giving him free undodgeable cloak and daggers, hits hard with that opener.

Why do rangers need to be pigeonholed into bunker builds because offensive builds on him are just not viable, when a thief can go d/d glass cannon or pistol/dagger attrition with high survival? Why does my guardian get to go bursty sword or greatsword builds with 7-8k crits and maintain also his bunker sustained damage and support builds? Why is the defining feature of the ranger his lack of build options outside sustained damage survivalist?

Is your condition cleanse only from 30 WS major? I’ve been finding that lack of condi removal screws me over a lot, especially against engineers and good necromancers that strip stability.

That is my main concern with using troll unguent. On the other hand, healing spring feels like it takes forever to recharge and you need to stay in it to get the most use out of it.

I wish we had more active control over our condi removal than random passive condi removal from 30 in WS and a long cd signet. I quite miss my ele and mesmer’s activated condition clears on low cd’s.

As a bunker BM condi ranger, it’s easy. If they let themselves get killed. A d/d ele can disengage from a BM ranger whenever he wants, and bunker ones who don’t forget cleansing fire and roll extra condi removal instead of aura share can safely bunker rangers.

But, BM bunker rangers are useless in group fights. It annoys me to no end when people complain that this one build whose only use is roaming should be “OP”. It has crap group utility, can’t kill fast enough, and in larger engagement the pet is dead anyways.

And I have come to realize that many people care less about balance and more whether their class is best at 1v1/roaming. You don’t see people complaining about guardians despite the fact that they are the most broken OP class in teamfights.

The difference between that bunker ranger and a bunker ele is that the ele can disengage much more easily and withstand focus fire better via cantrips.

The ele also has significantly more on demand condition clear and CC. The ranger, if specced for wilderness survival, gets 1 cure every 10 secs, if he takes signet of renewal it’s 2 condition clears every 10 secs randomly. You could argue healing spring, but you don’t always have the luxury standing in a spot, especially when getting zerged.

As for cc, the ranger has wolf fear with a 2 sec cast time and buggy autocancels on pet, and the random wolf knockdown unless he switches him in. Much crappier cc than the ele who can use it immediately on demand, and can bring aoe chill as well as cripple.

As the battle becomes larger, the bunker ranger becomes less effective, because the pet is very fragile to cleaving. More importantly, the bunker ranger does not cleave anywhere as well as an ele. As an ele pretty much everything you do outside earth auto cleaves. The bunker ranger with shortbow does not cleave, and if he switches to sword/torch or sword/dagger, his damage is garbage since mainhand sword is a power weapon and most bunker rangers run conditions.

You’re essentially complaining about a build whose only good use is dueling and somewhat debunkering (far less effectively since it takes longer than a necro or engi would debunker).

Stealth stunlockwing with a sword/dagger build thief is very fun though. Only works on classes without much stability like necro and engineer, however.

Biggest change they could do for rangers is to make them the other class with group stability/retal. Stand Your Ground is so disgustingly good — it’s pretty much what makes guardians a staple of any teamfight with an OP 30 sec cd whereas other classes need to pay 60+ seconds of cooldown for a single user stability.

Whether anet likes it or not boons and boon stripping are the meta of the game. Nothing comes close to the utility of boons and the ability to remove them. Hard cc like stuns from engineer or hammer warriors comes close, but it’s less apparent due to the preponderance of guardians.

Einlanzer.1627:

Chokolata.1870:

Thieves were not nerfed . In no game ever, especially RTS games would a fast mobile class or faction be given high damage . Usually the slowest option would do the most damage … because it is slow and avoidable .

Thieves have unparalleled mobility and damage , and an good escape mechanisms . Hence they are OP .

No, they don’t. Their mobility is slightly above average, their damage is on part with other classes, and their defense is atrocious. The reason why they seem to be OP is because Stealth (despite being horrible in PvE) synergizes well with a glass cannon build. This makes them harder to counter than other classes with glass cannon builds, but they still die immediately if you manage it. Moreover, there is little else they can do well. If anything, Thieves need some buffs to their other builds/sets at this point.

LOLOLOLOL “stealth is bad in PvE”. Tell that to people doing high lv dredge fractals or any amount of skipping in explorables, especially Arah.

@ above, why take withdraw over Hide in Shadows? A condition clear is more important when shadow return and infiltrator’s arrow already get you our of immobilize. Hide In Shadows also overrides poison, so it can never be decreased in health return.

Sebrent.3625:

And you can easily keep it up with torch and flame trap. Again, that was my primary point.

The only condition Engineer has reliable access to that the Ranger can only get via a pet is Confusion … which sucks in PvE.

Throw torch has a 6 sec duration and 15 sec cd, and is only single target. Flame trap at best is 2 secs burning per pulse, for 3 pulses, and is stationary.

You still don’t seem to understand that the engineer can apply it at much higher rates, with every attack he does in addition to piling other conditions.

If you want to bring a torch condition build, you’ll probably pair it with axe. Axe does absolutely garbage damage and application outside splitblade and throw torch. Splitblade also decreases in bleed stacks the more opponents you want to hit — engineer condition application is AOE. The stacks of conditions applied for the engineer do not decrease per mob it is spread to.

More importantly, if you want poison in addition to axe/torch, you’ll have to bring sword mainhand and dagger or warhorn. Which means your ranged sustained is crap, and you have crap burst.

The HGH engineer doesn’t give anything of this up. He can keep 25 stacks of might permanently by himself, with high fury uptime, and his grenades pack a punch besides the amount of condition damage he brings, all aoe. And the pistols give him aoe cc and a bouncing blind. It doesn’t matter that confusion sucks — it’s built in and it’s extra damage to his attacks that you do not have.

The engineer is a far superior condition character that the ranger will ever be.

Sebrent.3625:

Zenith.7301:

Sebrent.3625:

Ranger has burning:

• Flame trap
• Torch

Done :-)

Engineer has:

• OH Pistol
• Flamethrower
• Grenade
• Bomb

… but you don’t often see someone take all 3 of those weapon kits.

---

The only condition the Engineer has access to that the Ranger doesn’t is Confusion … and the Ranger could apply that using its Reef Drake.

---

Also, listing the # of 80s someone has isn’t a very good credential given how simple it is to level a character to 80.

Engineers don’t take OH pistol? that’s news to me, considering the standard HGH engineer build uses dual pistols and grenade. And their burning comes from the trait that procs burning on crit, of which their multihit abilities do plenty of.

I didn’t ever say Engineers don’t take OH pistol. Read and comprehend.

You mentioned “condition damage is only good on Engineer because it applies burning”, so I showed the ways the two different classes apply burning and mentioned that you don’t often see someone take all three kits … flamethrower, bomb, and grenade … since those were 3 of the 4 sources with the 4th being OH pistol.

Zenith.7301:

Listing number 80’s means you’ve some idea of how those classes play and what they have rather than looking at a wiki and speaking in the dark when you restrain yourself to playing one or two classes and theorize about others without experience on them.

I don’t care if you don’t trust my credentials. Those people who do 60+ fractals daily with me do. They trust me enough to bring a ranger when I don’t feel like being efficient and bringing a guardian or ele.

Having something and knowing how to use it well are two different things.

Without video of you doing it, it’s not a credential. I could say I have an 80 of everything as well and do 60+ fractals with all of them … but it’d be a lie. Neither of us has presented proof though, so both claims currently have the same amount of credit.

Fritz.5026:

I don’t understand why fire and poison stack duration and only bleed stacks magnitude.

I mean for instance you have a sword/dagger/viper trap … its completely pointless. you have 3 poisons and you can keep it up indefinitely with the dagger alone.

Poison trap does that in an AOE while sword and dagger do not.

You don’t NEED all those kits to keep burning up on the engineer. That’s a pretty quick way to quash your credentials, btw.

With pistol/pistol, the trait, and grenade kit and the high crit rate of an HGH build, you will keep up poison, burning, and bleeding up most of the time.

And I’ll leave it at that. This whole “neither of us have proof” tangent you’re hung up on doesn’t interest me.

Sebrent.3625:

Ranger has burning:

• Flame trap
• Torch

Done :-)

Engineer has:

• OH Pistol
• Flamethrower
• Grenade
• Bomb

… but you don’t often see someone take all 3 of those weapon kits.

---

The only condition the Engineer has access to that the Ranger doesn’t is Confusion … and the Ranger could apply that using its Reef Drake.

---

Also, listing the # of 80s someone has isn’t a very good credential given how simple it is to level a character to 80.

Engineers don’t take OH pistol? that’s news to me, considering the standard HGH engineer build uses dual pistols and grenade. And their burning comes from the trait that procs burning on crit, of which their multihit abilities do plenty of.

Listing number 80’s means you’ve some idea of how those classes play and what they have rather than looking at a wiki and speaking in the dark when you restrain yourself to playing one or two classes and theorize about others without experience on them.

I don’t care if you don’t trust my credentials. Those people who do 60+ fractals daily with me do. They trust me enough to bring a ranger when I don’t feel like being efficient and bringing a guardian or ele.

Fritz.5026:

I don’t understand why fire and poison stack duration and only bleed stacks magnitude.

I mean for instance you have a sword/dagger/viper trap … its completely pointless. you have 3 poisons and you can keep it up indefinitely with the dagger alone.

Then on the other hand you can stack bleed up 25 stacks.

just doesn’t make sense to me.

Because burning does the damage per tick of several bleedstacks with much easier to keep uptime? You need to ramp up bleeding stacks for it to not be complete garbage. Burning is good from the getgo. And poison is a utility condition — the problem is not enough mobs in pve heal consistently to make that poison’s utility good, just like chill has a decreased usage in pve and so does weakness (mobs don’t worry about endurance).

Sebrent.3625:

I often player my Mesmer in the higher level fractals (he is still my main … for now). There are plenty of bosses and mobs that continuously apply protection to themselves.

When it comes to the “need” for toughness/vitality in the highest level fractals, those who use condition damage have been known to use rampager’s gear (power/precision/condition) so they have some decent power, can benefit from on-crit (and it helps direct), and they still have good condition damage.

Those who don’t use condition damage at all use Berserker.

Both work. Thinking that berserker is the best and only way is very closed-minded.

I have 6 lv80 toons, of which I have spent well over 70 gold gearing out in the vain hope of having build variety. Especially the mesmer and necro. Needless to say, I WANT condition builds to be good, given that it was my initial desired build before the game launched. But reality is an entirely different matter.

And dredge don’t constantly reapply protection. The ones with shields do groupwide application, and that’s why you drop a null field and burn them down first while guardian walls/feedback protect you from the resonants’s shockwaves.

The only condition class I’ve had any remote pleasure of playing is the engineer, and that’s because he’s got the most condition application and the strongest of them all — burning — to stack on the bleeds from his frag grenades.

Sebrent.3625:

Zenith, condition damage ignores the protection that many bosses (and trash mobs) are leveraging in dungeons, especially the fractals.

Your problem if you’re not running mesmers with null field and boon removal on shatters. Few efficient groups don’t bring a mesmer, however.

Berserker gear damage in dungeons outperforms condition specs by more than the protection mitigates, and to be honest the only mobs with constant protection that you need stripping for are dredge. Either way a mesmer with mainhand sword autoattack chain will be stripping boons constantly.

Arpheus.6918:

Condition damage has to be weaker than berserker because on berserker you have to sacrifice all three stats for offense (power, precision, crit damage) instead of just one (condition damage).
So it’s fine that conditions are weaker than berserker damage.
If you just take power or precision or crit damage for example with healing power / toughness you will see that conditions are stronger if you just invest into one single offensive stat.

You don’t need toughness in any dungeon. Toughness is only a tool for less experienced players. We run full glass cannons in fractals 60+.

Reflection and vigor+dodges mitigates far more damage than foolishly trying to tank it/soak it.

The fact is that berserker gear needs to be nerfed to match spvp, by taking some of the critdmg away and switching it for vitality to reflect the spvp amulets, so the crit dmg cap everywhere is 60%. Berserker is too kitten good on competent people.

No, condition damage even without condition capping is still considerably inferior to power/prec/critdmg output.

Signet of The Wild has an immense cooldown compared to the boosting effects of other signets/utilities for classes, and only affects a third of your damage total without the trait. It may seem cool to burst in pvp, but it’s really bad for output in pve.

Trap ranger is only good in wvw/spvp anyways, since conditions are terrible compared to power berserker builds in PvE.

And signets are only good if you take signet of the beastmaster grandmaster trait. They should bake that trait in and make signets work like that baseline if they want people to use them.

Nevermind that the condition cap and the poor scaling stat for condi damage already holds condi specs back, but now bounties like Komali make conditions useless by instantly removing them?

Confusion just needs to be mad ea hard hitting one time proc and wear off. That way you can balance it for pve, so its benefit is always used (make it do like 4-5k on a proc, one time).

In wvw a one time 3k proc would be fair.

DelOnasi.6051:

New version uploaded without walling p1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDVWkceB1OY

(I’ve updated the link in the first post as well.)

Path 3 was still harder for me, since you can’t avoid some of his earth attacks by getting really close to him, and you can’t run to long range to heal up, but I think it’s harder than path 2. If you had to stay within 130-600 range (so you can’t avoid the earth up close or the fire at long range), path 1 would probably be the hardest.

I ended up managing it without retraiting to 5 second condition removal on death shroud. Eventually I realized that I could eat most of the burning with my regeneration, so perma-regeneration from a focus (+traits and runes) was actually more useful against the burning than 15 second condition removal on the dagger offhand. Getting close to him to avoid the earth attack was also important, but that’s partially because I suck at dodging (as you can see in the video, I fail to dodge almost every flame blast, even when I try).

Thanks for the challenge; that’ll keep my desire for hard content at bay for a while.

Zenith.7301:

The reason rangers don’t solo crap is that they’d have to bring subpar dps pets like devourer or drake to even see them survive for any amount of time, and the amount of perfect micromanagement to even have those kind of tankier pets survive is annoying.

I think the reason you don’t see many rangers solo things is probably just that there aren’t many ranger players who really wants to. For a long time the Compilation of Solo Dungeon Videos thread was mostly warriors and guardians, but now there are several videos with other classes (including rangers).

I bring horrible DPS (as you can see on the new p1 video) while soloing if I don’t have my minions out, and for a lot of solo fights they’re not viable (the flame blast hitting my flesh golem and using plague form for the risen thralls probably accounts for the time difference between p1 and p3). I don’t think anyone is soloing things to get them done quickly, they’re soloing things for fun. Longer fights do mean more chances to make mistakes, but if you’re not bringing pure damage those mistakes are less likely to kill you.

Yeah I meant the larger time windows to make mistake. But keep in mind that a ranger geared the way you are will do even worse DPS than you, because simply put 30-40% of a ranger’s damage is the pet. And the pet is dead all the time.

It’s just not fun to be a ranger when your class mechanic is limping beside you for most of the fight, even if it is doable. I managed to solo the gorilla boss in arah on my ranger because my group of pugs couldn’t make it by skipping through the adds. It was just so slow and mindnumbing with a pet dead most of the time because the summoned gorillas stunned it and zerged it down.

I got chased on my bunker ele and guardian. So no DPS theory. He just hates a particular someone in the match.

Considering I run Erro’s berserker greatsword signet build for the lols (I jaguar instead of raven), and come out fine, you can run this build in WvW fights fine.

It’s just not a roaming build because anyone with the brain to stall you out after you pop signets and hit you after you’re back to normal size will chew you up.

And in team fights you yourself might last, but the pet always dies 3 seconds in, as usual.

Roger Smithee.4730:

Bloody single-digit ranking pvp theorycrafting.

The crap that this carebear casual community lets slide is ridiculous. Mock him for god’s sake.

I’d rather mock people for being developmentally stunted enough to think “casual carebear” comes close to a phrase functional human beings would use.

Where’s your stun breaker? You don’t always get to start a fight with stability, and stability can be stripped off by a necro or mesmer.

And good luck with that cat lasting more than 4 seconds in the 40 man zergs that roa, around in wvw all the time lately lol. Ditto for explorable dungeons — cats go faster than a prom dress.

achensherd.2735:

TheWalkingDead.7298:

In what world are you guys playing in? Certainly not Tyria. Rangers are amazing solo point holders and duelist and do massive condition damage while still being very hardy. Beastmaster rangers are near unbeatable 1v1 and full trap/regen rangers do substantial AoE damage in team fights while applying many useful conditions like immobilize and poison and useful boons like vigor and regen.

He’s talking about WvW, though. I think many would concur that Rangers are in a good place in sPvP.

And by good place he means traps/condi bunker. Longbow rangers suck in spvp,as do most of the ranger power variants and greatsword as well.

Warriors have a rough time with conditions if they’re not running a shout+rune setup to remove conditions.

For classes like mesmer, necro, guardian, ele, and ranger the flame attack is no issue at all. Mesmer just needs blink, mantra of resolve, and null field. Or he can trait into inspiration for condition removal on healing, so he can drop null field and bring inspiration signet for some aegis.

In the case of guardian, purity+ smite conditions is all the condi removal you’ll be needing, especially if you carry the signet heal which is another condi removal every 10 secs.

For the ranger it’s healing spring+30 in wilderness for pet condi transfer and signet of renewal. Very steady condi removal. For ele it’s about as easy as water attunement+ ether renewal.

The reason rangers don’t solo crap is that they’d have to bring subpar dps pets like devourer or drake to even see them survive for any amount of time, and the amount of perfect micromanagement to even have those kind of tankier pets survive is annoying.

I’m very certain a ranger can also solo any encounter, but it’s much slower because 30-40% of his damage (the pet) is dead so often.

Change the game format and the classes will change. Dragon Tooth is garbage when targets can actually move freely without fear of losing the game because they didn’t stand on a small point where aoe can be funneled.

Ruggan.4102:

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Condition removal is bundled with stealth, correct. As for use frequently… well I guess you didn’t hear that they decreased the amount it can be used by increasing the reveal debuff timer. And yes, you actually do have to go into stealth for the condi removal to work… so if you hit Hide in Shadows for a heal and you have the revealed debuff… you do not cure those conditions. Oh yea that goes for cloak and dagger, blinding powder, ect ect. Any other class who has a debuff on an ability so they cant use that ability even when the CD timer is over (keep in mind, most of a thief’s stealth abilities are slot skills such as hide in shadows, blinding powder and not weapon skills… though we do have a few of those).

As for the ability to reset more effectively than most other classes (BTW, I would argue that Mesmers and Ele’s actually have better abilities to reset a fight… can we say invulnerability?)… well sure a thief should. After all, we are a medium armor melee class with the hit point base of a necro… which means, even on my ranger who has 356 less vitality than my thief (equal level), my thief trails his hit point pool by 1815 hit points so there is an actual difference in base hit points of over 5k… which is rather significant. Now, I know ele’s and necros and mesmers have low hit point pools… but then again, they have pets and aoe and ranges and channels and heals and invulnerabilities, and confusion and the list goes on and on.

Now that you got caught being dishonest about stability, you changed the subject to protection.

I just named you several classes who don’t have any stability other than their elite. It’s not just the thief.

As for ranger “protection”, the only protection you get comes from either speccing into wilderness survival, where you get 2 secs prot WHILE you dodge, making it actually at best a 1 second benefit of protection that is often wasted, and the other source of prot comes from nature magic, which is not taken because it competes for the trait for 33% longer regen boon duration. The prot trait on NM requires you be hit for over 10% of your health already, and has an internal cooldown.

And quite frankly, if you’re going to be so desperate as to bring stun switch traits in, why not mention the thief’s automatic shadowstep upon cc or his smoke powder upon hitting lower health traits? Oh, right, because it’s inconvenient for you.

But, hey, let’s make a switch. I’ll trade you a ranger for a thief, any day. I’m sure most pve groups will as well, as would wvw groups since the ranger’s pet is pretty much dead all the time in wvw, which means they operate under a permanent 30-40% damage handicap. When your damage gets cut by a third on most game types and has trouble keeping up with opponents because its ai sucks and its attack animations root it in place, then you get to complain.

Knight isn’t even close to berserker in output. Are you sure you’re not confusing knight for Cavalier?

Crit dmg stacking is extremely effective. There’s a reason warriors stack it.

Thief is like mesmer. Rough start without all your tools but becomes pretty strong as you get your kit.

That’s why necro needs vigor like guardian and mesmer and ranger ;(